Marketing insights for selling to the world's toughest market. From Rick Spence

Monday, January 02, 2006

Guess who owns SmallBusiness.ca

It’s time I started praising B2SB marketers who are doing a good job of marketing to business owners. So kudos to BDO Dunwoody.

Today I wondered who owns “smallbusiness.ca”. When I typed the URL into my browser, up popped the home page of small-business accounting firm BDO Dunwoody Canada. It looks like they registered the name in October 2000 (back when most organizations could only get one dot-ca registration each), so good on them for clearly communicating their market positioning over the long term.But why, I wonder, don’t they make something more of this?

When you type in http://www.smallbusiness.ca/, you come to the same home page you would if you’d typed “www.bdo.ca.” There’s nothing special to explain why BDO secured the smallbusiness.ca address. There’s nothing that addresses the likelihood that whoever lands on this page wasn’t looking for an accounting firm.

Why not give visitors a landing page worthy of the initiative they’ve shown? Congratulate them on their cleverness in finding BDO, since the firm is so committed to the small-business market, and its website contains so many useful features for entrepreneurs. Then help users find them.

Your Guide

Writer, speaker and consultant on business growth, entrepreneurship and opportunity. My column appears weekly in the National Post. My speaking topics include innovation, best practices, social media, and the future of business success.
Please e-mail me: rick (at) rickspence.ca
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